2012-10-24

Kwik-Bridj

Not too many places on the High Street where you can pop in for a bag of bridges. The Motherwell Bridge Company is, today, quite a large concern. This is an advert from 1917, found amongst all the adverts piled in at the back of the volume containing all of the issues of the journal The Engineer for that year.

This one's from a Bristol company, Llewellins (an unusual spelling), also still around after 95 years - which is good to see. The great pile of worm and spur reduction gears in the ad is impressive, but there's no sense of scale. They feel big though.

To get a sense of scale, there's nothing quite like putting a working engineer in the picture, standing next to the product. Let's see the ad for one of our very own Steel casters, John Spencer of Newcastle upon Tyne at Newburn.

Finally, still in 1917, there's this Ferodo ad. The brake-pad people. They are still around but I'm wondering if they are now so embedded into the infrastructure that nobody needs to mention them any more. Last I heard their name was on some small pieces of plastic scenery adorning a scalextric set. And that was when I was a youngster.